For the past week I’ve been installing a webcam in Golden, CO. This is my first attempt at a wireless/solar webcam installation. It’s been kicking my butt and also providing some great On the Job Training. I’ll post more details on the installation later, I’m still working through a few bugs. However before I get side tracked I wanted to talk about something that I realized while designing the webcam interface for JobSiteVisitor.com. The lighting and consistency of the time-lapse slide show would be much more uniform and less distracting to watch if the photos were all taken around the same time of day. This makes sense, right?

Previous construction time-lapses movies I’ve made consisted of images taken every 10-15 minutes through out the day. All these photos were then dropped onto a time line and speed-up like 500%. The effect was very cool however the changing daylight is very distracting. This video will show you what I mean.

So with JobSiteVisitor.com’s new webcam integration users will see real time webcam images but we’re only going to archive one photo from the same time each day. This will provide more consistent lighting for our time-lapse viewing. This integration will be available in the upper subscription package with-in the next week. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on this added feature.

Managing Construction photos can get out of hand when you’re taking photos every week. It’s important to have a plan regarding how you’re project plans to organize their progress photos. Often times project will have multiple people taking photos on multiple cameras. This slide show is designed to provide some basic information on why it’s a good idea to organize progress photos using JobSiteVisitor.com. The slide show also shows examples of what happens when you take progress photos from the same location on a regular basis over the duration of the project. A funny thing happens… you are able to document progress with your progress photos.

Anytime you’re taking progress photos on a construction site you’re going to be dealing with dust and dark areas. The combination of these two things makes it very difficult to take a good picture. What happens when you’re taking a photo in low light the first thing you want to do is turn on your flash. This works for most situations however when you’re on a construction site you often get a bunch of white dots all over your picture. These dots are caused by the flash bouncing off the dust particles near the lens which then find their way onto your picture. Above are (2) photos taken in the same area with different cameras. The one on the left was taken with a hand-held Point and Shoot camera with a flash and the photo on the right was taken with a hand-held SLR camera.

So how do we solve this Dust Dot issue? (more…)

360 Test

In rooms where there’s lots of electrical and plumbing in the walls it’s not a bad idea to take what are known as “In-Wall Rough-in” photos. These are photos used to document everything in the wall. They should be taken during a short time window between the final rough-in inspections and the start of drywall.

If you’ve ever had to take Rough-in photos with a regular point and shoot camera you know how difficult this task can be. Your typical job site camera can’t photograph the entire room and you usually end up with multiple shots in each room. It’s very time consuming and often yield less than desired results. Try taking 360-Virtual tours of your rooms. (more…)

In honor of St. Patty’s Day I thought I would talk about what’s going on with some photos I took yesterday. I definitely had a white balance issue with the green photo on the left. Digital cameras are great, however sometimes you’ll get some photos that come out very green, blue, and orange . This happens because digital camera’s  don’t always measure the light’s color temperature correctly. If you want to learn more about light temperature and digital photography check out Cambridge in Colour it’s a great website that can explain the physics behind it all.

Anyway, when you’re out taking progress photos pay attention to the display output. You’ll know immediately from the display image if you have a white balance issue. For many progress photos you can rely on the AWB “Auto White Balance” mode but if you’re taking a photos where you have a mixture of daylight and fluorescent lights you may need to force the white balance to daylight or fluorescent depending on the condition. This can be controlled through the camera’s “Menu”. You’ll want to select the “White Balance” option and then select the type of light that you think best matches your condition. It may take a couple tries but you’ll know when you’ve found the correct setting. Check your manual or go online if you’re having trouble finding the white balance setting, every camera is different. Hope this helps explain why sometimes your photos may be green, blue or orange.

Note:  If you have to take the camera off Auto White Balance (AWB) I suggest changing it back to “Auto” when you’re done. Otherwise someone else may grab the camera who’s not familiar with white balancing and take a bunch of blue photos then wonder what happened, trust me…